But I'll build an electron app, and have support for Linux /s
this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2025
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When gecko electron?
(Yes, I know that there has been effort to that, but at one point having gecko and FF seperate was too much work, so it was merged further, so that it's now even harder to create a gecko-based electron. So basically just create a clean FF profile, add all addons you want (uBlock and noscript are useful for some apps), and make a desktop shortcut to open the web page in that specific profile. Funnily enough, it's more lightweight!)
XULRuner use to exist. I ran Chatzilla under it at one point in time.
Can I get a browser built entirely on Electron?
I’m experimenting with a game and rather than deal with platform specific graphics I’m just targeting wasm and webgl and plan to embed my game in a browser runtime.
It feels less terrible than the mess that is linking platform specific logic and code.
Or use a real cross-platform UI toolkit.
Do you have suggestions?
Last time I looked at QT I didn’t like it
For what it’s worth, I’m not looking at electron but something like an embedded browser mode. I think qt has that
I even forgot how that one i liked years ago was named. But Wikipedia has a (likely slightly outdated) list. Just google "cross platform ui toolkit".
Qt is overkill if all you're using it for is to create a window you render into, something like SDL would be better.
That’s how I feel, and I was between SDL and just writing GL code myself.
The problem is I run Mac and OpenGL is at best neglected and is deprecated. If I use webgl and wasm I done have to worry about any of that, and they have sdl for wasm.
Edit: my game is going to be 2d and the UI isn’t going to be more complex than raylib. I’m just playing around but also building an idea I’ve had for years.
The vast majority of game engines already have seamless cross platform support. Nothing need be done beyond selecting your target when compiling. Use Vulkan instead of dx11/12 and good to go
And yet, the most popular, and desired (and one of the most admired) IDEs that developers use all day, everyday, is built using Electron:
https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/technology/#2-integrated-development-environment
~~vscode isn't an IDE, but an actual IDE written in electron would be horrible.~~
I don't want to argue about this anymore. I admit i had a bad take, and this whole thread is just arguing about semantics at this point. Does it even really matter if vscode is an IDE or not? If it works, it works.
It's literally listed in stack overflow's section on IDEs, and functions as a replacement for an IDE. Insisting that it's not an IDE in this context isnt helping anyone communicate, it's just being pedantic.
They also list vim and notepad++ as IDEs, pretty sure they just meant code editors in general.
Fucking NANO is on the list 😂
With enough plugins vim can have almost all of the features of an ide. Not that I recommend using it like that tho.
What functionality is Vscode lacking for it to be an IDE?
IDEs come bundled with tooling, such as debuggers, intelligent code completion, and OOTB language support, and language servers.
vscode out of the box doesn't have any of these, you install them with plugins. jetbrains products, for example would be IDEs, but editors like vscode and neovim aren't. Those are code editors.
What’s different between Vscode and other editors like Vim is how easy it is to make it a fully fledged IDE. Usually a notification pops up about analyzers being available, and if you click accept it’s done. Just one click of a button.
With Vim it’s not that easy. You need to install many separate plugins just to make it a fraction of an IDE.
I agree. I was mainly thinking of neovim, but i guess vim works in this example, too.
I was talking about the base editor itself, though. In the end it doesn't even matter what we consider VSCode to be, i feel this thread has just devolved into arguing about semantics and bikeshedding, and there's no correct solution.
I think i'll just be deleting my main comment, admit I had a bad take and move on. i'm tired of arguing about this.
Seems unnecessarily pedantic 🤷
I don't think it really matters, but the implication you can write a whole IDE in electron is just insane.
It is pretty pedantic, i agree. I don't want to start an argument about something as pointless as this, though.
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You could call vscode a "DIY IDE Building Kit" because everybody is using it that way.
After you put all the extensions together you basically got a fully featured "IDE" for most languages out there.
Nobody I know uses vscode like a simple "code editor".
I agree, neither do i. I was talking about base vscode, but i don't think it even matters anymore. There's really no proper answer. Some people use it like a notepad, some people use it like a fully fledged IDE. I'm just tired of arguing over this, and i admit i had a bad take.
I think that whether it needs plugins or not to do the job isn’t really relevant.
You can develop software in a large number of languages including writing the code (with intelligent code completion), building it, committing it to source control and running and debugging it.
If it didn’t use plugins to do that then it’d huge and take ages to start up.
I didn't mean it in a bad way. I prefer how vscode does it. and i think you're right.
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This distinction is not useful since the creation of language servers.
I'm keeping an eye on Zed: https://zed.dev/
Yeah, AI, whatever. It's written in Rust and looks pretty great.
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Why is Spacemacs listed separately to Emacs when it's just a fancy Emacs' config?